Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker

Alan Turing's fundamental contributions to computing led to the development of modern computing technology, and his work continues to inspire researchers in computing science and beyond. This book is the definitive collection of commemorative essays, and the distinguished contributors have expertise in such diverse fields as artificial intelligence, natural computing, mathematics, physics, cryptology, cognitive studies, philosophy and anthropology.

The volume spans the entire rich spectrum of Turing's life, research work and legacy. New light is shed on the future of computing science by visionary Ray Kurzweil. Notable contributions come from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, and the distinguished logician Martin Davis, who provides a first critical essay on an emerging and controversial field termed hypercomputation. A special feature of the book is the play by Valeria Patera which tackles the scandal surrounding the last apple, and presents as an enigma the life, death and destiny of the man who did so much to decipher the Enigma code during the Second World War.

Other chapters are modern reappraisals of Turing's work on computability, and deal with the major philosophical questions raised by the Turing Test, while the book also contains essays addressing his less well-known ideas on Fibonacci phyllotaxis and connectionism.

Auteur

Christof Teuscher holds an electronic engineer degree and received the diploma degree in computer engineering (equivalent to a MSCS degree) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) in 2000. Since then, he has been a research and teaching assistant in the Logic Systems Laboratory at EPFL, pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the field of biologically-inspired computing machines.

Christof Teuscher's work has been honored with several awards. His first book has been published by Springer-Verlag in 2001: Turing's Connectionism: An Investigation of Neural Network Architectures. He was head of the BioWall project that was widely covered by the media. Christof's second book - Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker - will be published in 2003. Christof has also been nominated for a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Christof Teuscher is the initiator and organizer of the Turing Day and an organizer and program chair of the 5th International Workshop on Information Processing in Cells in Tissues, IPCAT2003. He is also a member of the program committee of the 5th International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware, ICES'03, of the 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL2003, and of the NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware, EH-2003.

Texte du rabat

Written by a distinguished cast of contributors, Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker is the definitive collection of essays in commemoration of the 90th birthday of Alan Turing. This fascinating text covers the rich facets of his life, thoughts, and legacy, but also sheds some light on the future of computing science with a chapter contributed by visionary Ray Kurzweil, winner of the 1999 National Medal of Technology. Further, important contributions come from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, and from the distinguished logician Martin Davis, who provides a first critical essay on an emerging and controversial field termed "hypercomputation".

Contenu

Foreword (D. Hofstaedter) - Preface (Ch. Teuscher) PART I: TURING'S LIFE AND THOUGHTS Alan's Life: A Short Biography (A. Hodges) - Hacking the Turing Test (V. Paterna) - From Turing to the Information Society (D. Cerqui) PART II: COMPUTATION AND TURING MACHINES The Mechanization of Mathematics (M.J. Beeson) - Hypercomputational Models (M. Stannett) - Turing's Ideas and Models of Computation (E. Eberbach, D. Goldin, P. Wegner) - The Myth of Hypercomputation (M. Davis) - Quantum Computers: The Church-Turing Hypothesis versus the Turing Principle (Ch.G. Timpson) - Implementation of a Self-Replicating Universal Turing Machine (H.F. Restrepo, D. Mange, G. Tempesti) - Cognitive Science and the Turing Machine: An Ecological Perspective (A.J. Wells) PART III: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE TURING TEST Can Machines Think? (D.C. Dennett) - The Law of Accelerating Returns (R. Kurzweil) - The Computer, Artificial Intelligence, and the Turing Test (B.J. Copeland, D. Proudfoot) - Robots and Rule-Following (D. Proudfoot) - Strawberries with Cream, Mistakes, and Other Idiotic Features (Helmut Schnelle) PART IV: THE ENIGMA Alan M. Turing's Contributions to Co-Operation between the UK and the US (L.A. Gladwin) - The Brains behind the Enigma Code Breaking before the Second World War (E. Rakus-Andersson) - Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in World War II (T. Sale) PART V: ALMOST FORGOTTEN IDEAS Turing's Connectionism (Ch. Teuscher) - Watching the Daisies Grow: Turing and Fibonacci Phyollotaxis (J. Swinton) - What would Alan Turing have done after 1954? (A. Hodges)